Hacker News is patting itself on the back for finding What It Takes To Become An Expert At Anything? The basic qualities of expertise are well known, and I've gone over them before: 10,000 hours of practice, the grit to spend 10,000 hours, awareness of your mistakes during practice and conscious steps to avoid them, and feedback, so do your expertise in public.

But theer's a vast gulf between expertise and simple competence. And simple competence is actually not that far away. It's not ten years of your life. It's not even one year of your life. It's about three months.

Because it takes 100 hours to become competent at anything. Oh, you need all the other qualities, and once you've earned competence you have to do it regularly to keep it, but if you want to be a competent speaker in any language, it's 100 hours. If you want to learn how to draw, 100 hours. If you want to learn to play piano, 100 hours.